'Changeling,'
Impostor Tale,
Itself Feels False

Plot Mushy, Jolie Pushy; Scott Thomas Haunts Moving 'I've Loved You'

By

Joe Morgenstern

Updated Oct. 24, 2008 11:59 p.m. ET

"Only connect!" E.M. Forster urged famously in his novel "Howard's End." The injunction couldn't be more relevant to Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," a period drama set in Los Angeles in the late 1920s. Connections are missing or scrambled between the filmmaking and the period, between the co-stars, Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich, and between the characters they play.

A true story provided the film's premise. In 1928, a telephone operator and single mother named Christine Collins came home...